


Hazy

by TatteredTeddy



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: F/M, Piers Nivans Lives, Pure Unadulterated Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:22:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28734897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TatteredTeddy/pseuds/TatteredTeddy
Summary: Piers Nivans and Karina Macauley are recovering together, and a call from Chris Redfield brightens their day.
Relationships: Piers Nivans/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 3





	Hazy

The whole world felt like it was experiencing that period of time after a mental breakdown where you’re not crying anymore, but everything still feels hazy and confusing and a bit off-kilter. Finn Macauley still had yet to be found. Chris Redfield was still stubbornly denying he needed therapy, even after the quickest PTSD diagnosis the BSAA’s resident psychiatrist had ever given out. The real Ada Wong wanted to apologize to Chris for what he thought she’d done to him, but she knew she’d get a bottle broken over her head if she came to his doorstep. Leon Scott Kennedy sat by Helena Harper’s side as she told her sister’s gravestone about the events of the past few days.  
  
As for Piers Nivans and Karina Macauley, neither of them wanted to leave the apartment. A stack of broken-down cardboard boxes sat by the front door, the remnants of Kali moving into what had previously been just Piers’ place. Neither of them felt like taking them out to the recycling bin quite yet. That was usually Piers’ job, but not for now. Not for a while, probably. He was still learning how to move his prosthetic arm around, those few times he actually didn’t protest putting it on.  
  
Piers is fast asleep on the couch, wrapped up in a warm nest of blankets. A small tube of scar-fading cream sits on the coffee table: a remnant of Kali’s past that she figured she could pass on to Piers if he ever felt like he needed it. It seems to be watching over him, like a protection charm, waiting until he’s healed enough that he only has a scar that no longer causes him pain. Strangely, although Piers is asleep, Kali is wide awake. She usually took a nap in the afternoon, but she just realized that she hadn’t called Chris in a while. Usually when she called him, it was just to find out if the search and rescue team had found any new information or if Finn was still presumed dead. She didn’t even get a “hello” from him anymore. His usual greeting to her was just “No news yet, kid. Sorry.” So when she dialed his number and heard him pick up the phone, she spoke first so she wouldn’t get that same disgruntled greeting.  
  
“Hey… It’s not about Finn this time.”  
  
“It’s not? Then why are you calling me?”  
  
“I guess I just… wanted to let you know that Piers is doing alright. He’s asleep on the couch right now. The painkillers the doctor gave him make him really sleepy. I’d wake him up so he can say hi, but I don’t think he really wants to be woken up right now.”  
  
“Heh, that’s sweet. How’s the stump doing?”  
  
Kali laughs half-heartedly, more like a shaky sigh than a real laugh. “It’s healing pretty well. Looks, y’know, like a stump. A cute one though. He’s got this special cream that I’ve been putting on for him every night… poor guy flinches every time I come near him with that stuff. He’s been having a lot of phantom pains lately, and I guess that plus the typical pain he’s got to deal with after a surgery is really taking a toll on him.”  
  
“Yeah, that happens. I know a couple other guys who’ve got their limbs blown off. It’s the same thing every time.”  
  
Kali looks over at Piers before tiptoeing into the kitchen. “Were they able to get back to work with the BSAA?” she asks, her voice noticeably softer.  
  
“Yeah, we always found something they could do. Training new recruits, communications, all those desk jobs and shit… we find a way for our men. There’s all kinds of tech shit in the HQ buildings that I’ve never understood, but I’m sure Piers could figure it out. His generation’s way better at computer stuff.”  
  
“I bet he could. I know how much he loves you guys. He talked about you nonstop when he was high on that hospital-grade shit after the surgery. I’m sure he’ll want to get back to the BSAA as soon as he can.”  
  
“He was talking about us, huh? He didn’t tell too many stories about the dumb shit Alpha Team liked to do before heading off to Edonia, did he?”  
  
“No… mostly just about how he wanted to see you and Finn. Ms. Valentine visited one day and she told him all kinds of funny stories about you two back in the ‘90s… that really cheered him up.” She glances back at Piers, who’s still fast asleep under both of the BSAA blankets in the apartment. One was his, and one was Finn’s, given to Kali by an anonymous BSAA soldier. She slept with it every night, clinging onto it like a security blanket. She’d only give it up during the day so that Piers could nap with it.  
  
The sound of Chris sighing crackles through the phone speaker. “He talked about Finn, huh?”  
  
“Yeah… we both miss him a lot. I… I don’t know if anyone could possibly miss him as much as I do, but I know Piers thought of him as a brother… he told me all about it when he was all drugged up after the surgery. About how all of you on his team loved Finn, even if you never said it straight out. He was the team’s little brother.”  
  
“Why do you think we took you in so fast? We weren’t gonna let anything happen to another Macauley kid. Piers didn’t leave your side in the hospital either when you were concussed to hell and back.”  
  
“I kind of remember that.” Kali lifts her hand up to the scar along her hairline and runs her fingertips along the pronounced purplish ridge. She only vaguely remembers being in the hospital after her concussion, trying to feel the staples they put in but being stopped by Piers frantically grabbing her hand. He didn’t want to startle her, though, so he just held her hand for a while after that. He was surprisingly soft and gentle, even though he had some calluses from his sniper duties. At one point, she leaned her head onto his hand and rested it there, until she fell asleep again and Piers was functionally trapped. “Do you think that’s when he started to like me?”  
  
“Kid, he was into you from the moment he saw you. The nurses could barely get you out of his arms when he took you into the ER. I thought love at first sight was bullshit until I had to drag him out of your room at five in the morning to make him get some sleep.”  
  
Kali feels her face heat up. He liked her from that first moment? How could anyone look at a concussed mess with torn clothes and blood crusted over her face and still find her beautiful? Love can be strange, she supposes. “I guess he knows how I felt right after the amputation, then. I didn’t want to leave his side. I still don’t want to leave him alone for a minute now… I just worry so much about him.” She sighs and looks back toward the living room again. “I don’t even know what he could do to hurt himself while I’m gone, but I find myself worrying anyway.”  
  
“Of course you do. That’s because… well, because you love him.”  
  
“Yeah, you’re right on that one. I do love him.”  
  
As if on cue, Piers’ soft, tired voice drifts over to Kali. “Hey… who’s on the phone?” he asks.  
  
“It’s Chris. I’ll put him on speaker.” Kali smiles warmly at her boyfriend as she comes back into the living room and snuggles up right beside him. His singular remaining arm wraps around her shoulders, lifting the blankets over her with it.  
  
“Captain… hi. I’m sorry I haven’t called or anything, I’ve practically been asleep all through this week…”  
  
“I know, kid. I wasn’t expecting you to call right now anyway. God knows you’re too tired for that shit. How’s the stump feeling?”  
  
“Alright. It doesn’t look too messed up anymore.” Piers glances down at where his arm used to be. He doesn’t look stunned to see it missing anymore. He’s slowly starting to get used to the stump.  
  
“Kali was telling me about how Jill told you about me and her back in the ‘90s,” Chris says in the same tone he uses when he’s being the hyper-professional captain. “What’d she tell you?”  
  
“Jill…?”  
  
“Right. You just know her as Ms. Valentine.”  
  
“Oh. Heh… right. She told me about how you two were in a special ops team together and you were always the prankster of the team. She said you covered the office with sticky notes one time?”  
  
Chris sighs, trying to hold in his laughing. “Yeah, sure did. A couple guys decided to sticky-note me as revenge after they cleaned their desks out from underneath the chaos.”  
  
“I can’t imagine you as a prankster, Captain.”  
  
“I can see it,” Kali giggles. “Jill said you gave your captain hell. Lemme guess, Piers and my brother did the same for you?”  
  
“Ha, they were nowhere near as bad as I was. Piers was such a goddamn goody two-shoes during training, you know.”  
  
“Hey, I just followed the rules!” Piers whines.  
  
“Yeah, you sure did. You wanna tell Kali how you almost made her brother cry the first time you two met?”  
  
Piers sighs dramatically and rolls his eyes. “Well, it was the first day we all got together as a team. Captain was going over the basics of how a field mission usually goes, and next thing I know, the kid’s got tears in his eyes.”  
  
“Yeah, because you were showing off how much you knew and staring him down the whole time,” Chris retorts. “Fuckin’ backseat driver.”  
  
Kali bursts out laughing and Piers just rolls his eyes at his girlfriend, but a snicker escapes him before he can control it. The next thing they know, all three of them are cracking up.  
  
“Hey, whenever the stump quits hurting, you two better come visit me sometime. It’s boring as hell in the office without you two giving me shit all the time.”  
  
“You mean Kali giving you shit and me being the normal one,” Piers corrects.  
  
“Okay, Peepo, what about that Keurig incident?”  
  
“Peepo? Shit, did Finn teach you that one?”  
  
“Hey, I’ll have you know that was a whole Alpha Team effort,” Chris laughs. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone. Let me know when you two are feeling ready to keep me company.”  
  
“Alright, I will. See you soon, Captain.”  
  
Chris does that happy sigh he always did at his team members, like a father watching his son grow up. “See you.”  
  
“Bye-bye, Chris!” Kali pipes up before Chris hangs up the phone.  
  
“Were you two talking before I woke up?” Piers asks after Kali sets her phone down on the coffee table.  
  
“Yeah. Mostly about you, of course. He’s worried about you, you know. He cares about you a lot.”  
  
“I’m glad. Especially because he sure seemed fed up with me a lot during the mission.” Piers shakes his head, and his hair flops in his face a little. He looks so different when he doesn’t have anywhere to go and doesn’t bother to do his hair for the day.  
  
“Yeah, Jill’s still trying to get him to see the BSAA therapist. I know he appreciated having you there to ground him though. He probably wouldn’t have made it home without you reminding him to not be such an idiot.”  
  
“Hey, it’s what I do as the goody two-shoes of the BSAA.” He leans back and looks up at the ceiling, a smile teasing at the corners of his lips. “I just had to make sure that everything he did was something the Macauleys would be proud of.”  
  
“Yeah… I’m proud of both of you. Especially you, sweetie. I’m the proudest of you that I could ever be.”  
  
Of course… that is the one part of those hazy days that everyone forgets. Because hazy days, where you’re still coming out of a breakdown, just go to show that you’re getting better. Everyone involved in the missions in Edonia and China were doing better, despite the tears that fell on Deborah Harper’s gravestone during every visit, the therapist’s phone number sitting on Chris Redfield’s kitchen table, and the fears of being unable to trust her superiors that Sherry Birkin still couldn’t quite push through yet. And despite the stacks of flattened boxes and the bottle of scar cream waiting patiently for its turn to be needed, Piers Nivans and Karina Macauley might have been doing the best out of everyone.


End file.
